Dish Lost More Subscribers Than Expected in 3Q

Dish Network Corp (NASDAQ:DISH) lost more subscribers than expected because of promotions from rivals such as DirecTV, but the satellite television provider paid its shareholders a surprise dividend on Monday.

Dish lost 111,000 subscribers in the third quarter, bringing its total base to about 13.9 million, down 2.4 percent from a year earlier.

Brean Murray analyst Todd Mitchell was expecting a loss of 25,000 subscribers.

Last week, DirecTV said it had gained more than 327,000 million customers in the United States, its highest in seven years. The company, which is Dish's biggest rival, attracted new subscribers by heavily promoting its NFL Sunday Ticket package of out-of-market football games as a free service for a year to new customers who switched from a rival.

"Dish just didn't go to market against the Sunday Ticket promotion," Mitchell said. "It wasn't a focus."

Instead, Dish put its marketing dollars into promoting a new online movie service from its Blockbuster brand, which it acquired last April, he added.

In September, the company made a move to bette per share, up from $244.9 million, or 55 cents per share, a year earlier.

The results missed Wall Street expectations of 73 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose 12.3 percent to $3.60 billion, slightly below analysts' expectations of $3.64 billion.Shares of Dish were down 0.6 percent at $23.35 in premarket trading.